Measures, weights and money of the Bible

Cubits and spans, ephahs and baths, shekels and talents are the units in which Scripture measures the ark, the harvest and the price of a field. Below are the converter and the kinds of measures; the page of each kind has a table of its units: what each unit is, where it appears in the Bible and how the units relate to each other.

Ratios between units are exact: a span is half a cubit, a lepton is a hundred and twenty-eighth of a denarius. Absolute sizes are known only approximately, so the tables give the range accepted in reference works and name their sources.

Money is measured by what it could buy. A denarius was a day’s wage for a labourer (Matthew 20:2), so every sum is also shown in days of work and in grams of silver. The conversion into today’s money is only a rough guide: wages and prices change every year.

Converter

Kind

Amount

Enter a non-negative number up to 1 000 000: 2, 0.5 or 1/4.

From

= 6/7 Long cubit (0.857)

In metric units: ≈ 0.44–0.525 m, typically 0.445 m

Kinds of measures

Length

Cubits, spans, reeds and a sabbath day's journey: biblical units of length with their size in metres and their places in Scripture.

Area

The yoke of land and fields measured by the seed they take: biblical units of area in square metres.

Weight

Talents, minas, shekels and gerahs: biblical weights in grams and kilograms, with their places in Scripture.

Capacity

Ephahs, baths, homers and hins: dry and liquid measures of the Bible in litres, with their places in Scripture.

Money

Denarii, drachmas, shekels and talents in days of work and grams of silver, with the sums named in Scripture.